Piper Lamb knows how to make fruits and vegetables keep for months. Unfortunately, it’s the people around her who are expiring too soon…
After her fiancé left her, Piper came to Cloverdale to rebuild her life and open up her shop, Piper’s Picklings, to sell pickles and preserves. When her ex decides to drop in for a visit—just as things are heating up between her and a local Christmas tree farmer—Piper finds herself in a jam.
But there are other visitors to worry about…
An Italian soccer team is set to play the Cloverdale All-Stars in an exhibition game. Their manager, Raffaele Conti, was a bitter rival of Piper’s dill supplier, local farmer Gerald Standley. After Conti is found dead in Standley’s field, Piper must work to clear Gerald’s name and find out who relished killing Raffaele before the town is soured by another death.
INCLUDES RECIPES!
When I started creating my Pickled
and Preserved series, one of the first things I needed to decide was the
setting. A real town or a fictional one? Large or small? Well, that was easy.
Since I was writing a cozy mystery—which almost always takes place in small
towns— my setting would be a fictional small town.
For an author, having a fictional
town makes things so much simpler: no need to check maps for names of streets
that intersect at such-and-such place, or wonder how far from City Hall the
court house might be. I can put City Hall wherever I want, and build the court
house—or any house—any place I choose. I just can’t move them once I put them
in place. That tends to confuse things.
But with a small town—real or
fictional—there comes a problem: you start to run out of people. Think about
it. If in every book at least one person is murdered—often two—and a third
person, the murder, goes off to prison, then the town population is steadily
reduced with every book.
Jessica Fletcher’s small town of
Cabot Cove began to have this problem. With that long running series, the
population began to shrink down to Jessica, the sheriff, and a few
regularly-appearing friends—none of whom anyone wanted to kill.
The TV show solved that by sending
Jessica off to the big city. It certainly broadened their options, but it also,
in my opinion, lost much of the cozy flavor. Jessica was glamoured-up (no more
bike-riding around town in floppy clothes), and she acquired more sophisticated
friends. I don’t want changes like that to happen to my town of Cloverdale, NY,
so this is what I’ve done and intend to do to avoid them:
Since my protagonist, Piper Lamb, was
new to Cloverdale when the series began with The Pickled Piper, she definitely couldn’t
meet everyone at once. My town is large enough so that involving twenty or so
characters with each story insures that a new set of twenty or thirty will be available for the next story.
Of course, I plan for certain characters
to be in every story, such as Piper’s Aunt Judy and Uncle Frank, and her
assistant Amy Carlyle, along with Amy’s father Sheriff Carlyle. Nate Purdy is
Amy’s boyfriend, and they seem to be on the path toward marriage, so Nate
appears in the first two Pickled and Preserved books. But, as we all know,
anything can happen to relationships, so who knows if he’ll be around in more?
The same with Piper’s boyfriend, Will. He seems a steady sort, and their
relationship has been growing, but again, who knows what the future will bring
with Will?
Cloverdale, like most places, is a
town in flux. People move away and new residents move in. Another way to keep
my fictional population from being decimated by murders is to insure that new
neighbors move in—not necessarily to the very homes vacated by my victims or
murderers, but you know what I mean.
Piper could always take a brief
vacation (maybe a honeymoon?) someday. This would give Cloverdale a little rest
from crime (and let Sheriff Carlyle take a breather, too), but I might want to
pack up a few of my Cloverdale regulars to go along as well. A bus tour?
Cruise? Both work, and that would keep the town population in a nice, healthy
state.
In LICENSE TO DILL, I brought a
whole busload of visitors to Cloverdale. This was an Italian soccer team that came
to play a tournament against the Cloverdale All Stars. That plumped up the
population a good bit for a while, and though somebody was murdered, I eventually
kept somebody from the bus behind, so that evened out nicely.
However, if worse comes to worst and
we’ve finally met everyone in the town, people stop moving there because of the
high murder rate, and Piper can’t leave on a trip because the last ten surviving
townspeople are begging for her help, I could perhaps, in desperation, create
an alternate universe. Remember Fringe, the TV show that went that route? The
entire cast of Fringe turned out to have doppelgangers in an alternate universe
that Walter, the half-mad scientist, discovered the portal to. Even Walter had
his mirror image, whom he called Walter-nate, and everyone’s twin was slightly
different from the originals, some in a faintly evil way.
Could I do that to my town? Find a portal
from Cloverdale to, um, New Cloverdale? Have Piper’s doppelganger fix marinated
meats instead of pickles and turn Aunt Judy into a wicked stepmother instead of
a loving aunt? Jessica Fletcher was only sent to New York, not outer space, to
provide her with new murder victims and suspects. That worked for Cabot Cove.
But Cloverdale, you see, is not Cabot Cove.
Hmm. A New Cloverdale. I wonder …
The next step was to write a full length novel, but I still had
much to learn. Joining writers groups like the Maryland Writers Association,
Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime, helped immensely, along with
participating in critique groups. After a few false starts and much re-writing,
my first novel, Resort to Murder, was accepted and
published by Avalon. Avalon then published my second novel, A
Taste of Death, which featured the same protagonist, a young teacher
whose vacations tended to become dangerous.
Having two published books to my name caught the interest of an
agent, who encouraged me to create the Craft Corner mystery series. Wreath of Deception, String of Lies,
and Paper-thin Alibi were soon published by Berkley
Prime Crime. Berkley is also publishing my next series, the Pickled and
Preserved mysteries, which begins with The Pickled Piper.
All of this happened, of course, over several years. A 12-line verse is a long way from a 70,000 word novel but it was my first big step towards earning the title of “mystery author.” My journey continues, with ups and downs and the occasional side step, but with plenty of enjoyment and wonderful companions along the way. I’m looking forward with great eagerness to what still lies ahead.
So when I began this book, I was expecting great things. And great things I received! Piper was just as wonderful. The mystery was superbly written. I loved the rivalry between the soccer manager and Piper's dill farming nemesis, Gerald. I especially loved that when push came to shove, Piper was eager and determined to clear Gerald of any suspicion when the manager winds up dead! It was a great example of how respectful people can be, even when there's competition in the mix. Just a wonderful storyline.
I also loved the supporting cast of characters. Piper and her Aunt and Uncle, her assistant, Amy, and of course Nate. Having them reappear in this book was so exciting, and it'll be fun to watch them grow as characters as well!
Overall, I felt that this offering was even better than the first. And truthfully? I can't wait for number three!
Rating: 5 stars
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All conclusions reached are my own.
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